An excerpt and an idol and a reason why I write.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, chapter 7

I have tried to describe this feeling on countless occasions, but was never quite able to in the way that she does. I could try to tell little aspects- the world rushing by me or missing every opportunity I watch come along or wanting and wanting and wanting so badly that I feel like it physically hurts. But alone, I think, none of these suffice. Now that I've read how she says it, I can almost explain what it is for me- wanting an English degree from Merton college at Oxford, but still needing to studying theatre at NYU or Yale, I want to live in a small apartment with a balcony in Montmatre Paris, or a little cottage in the English countryside and feel incredibly chiche and romantic, but also, I'd love to stay in New York. I want a little girl who looks like me, but I swear I'll never settle. I want to be a runner and a writer and a performer and a free spirit and someone grounded and to be this person and that person, but then I want just a better version of myself. I feel my life unraveling before me, every step defining the next one, every choice leading to something larger, feeling that I must make these decisions fast before time runs out, but never being able to. I know that logically I cannot have all of this- be in two places at once, be five different people at once, have ten different lives at once- but illogically I think I'll never be happy without it, and unable to bring myself to a choice, I eventually see it slipping away, smell the figs of what could have been my future rotting.

What is so brilliant about The Bell Jar isn't the story (though that is brilliant as well), it isn't the language (though that is most definitely brilliant as well), rather it is Sylvia Plath's ability to feel for others and write what they cannot- it is her incredible insight into humans and emotions. During The Bell Jar instead of feeling like an outsider, reading Esther's story, thinking- like the others- that she just a young tragic woman who lost her mind, I found myself rather tied up in her world. Suddenly she wasn't insane, they were- the doctors and the therapists and her mother and Buddy and the other girls in the asylums that she was sent to. They were all mad, but she was fine. Suddenly, I was with her at every appointment in the offices and waiting rooms, I was there for her during each heartbreak and treatment and breakdown and failed attempt at death. I was looking through Esther's eyes at the rest of the world. It made sense when she thought that every last stranger who passed her by most definitely had some grand plan to harm her, I understood when suicide seemed logical, I believed her when she said that she hadn't slept in fourteen nights. Her mother didn't, her doctor didn't, but I did.

There is a reason why this beautiful, eloquent and tragic novel has survived, still relevant to anyone who may read it, some 50 years later. Yes the times have changed- that much is clear from where the story is in women's rights and medical breakthroughs, but hurt, confusion, joy remains the same- what happens in us, I think, never changes as rapidly as the outside world. Though I am not suicidal and our lives are as vastly different as our ages, I feel as through Sylvia Plath understands me. Each human struggle is individual, but the presence of them in everyone remains the same- Plath is able to simply take that presence and create something incredible that not only connects to everyone, but that forces them to feel. That, I suppose, is what makes an artist.

This is the gift I want to have.

Slow down.

When I flipped to the end, I honest-to-god didn't know it was over. I scanned the next page and saw that blankness- that absence of words- and the feeling that came wasn't so much sad as it was confused. I waited for the empty, hollow-ness that always came with the end of a beloved book. But, it never come. Maybe then, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings wasn't so beloved to me after all. Or maybe the end of the book just didn't feel like an ending. It stopped abruptly and out of the blue just as a new chapter of her life was being opened- almost as if Maya Angelou had collapsed, mid-paragraph, pen still in hand, unable to finish her thought. That's what it felt like. But then again, that's what this whole book seemed to feel like to me- one event after another, one place or thing after another that you just keep thinking you'll get attached to. Person after person gets introduced into Maya's life and they just seem so prominent for that moment, that you keep hoping they'll be important or that you'll get to know them and love them, but then, before you know it, they're ripped out from under you, gone from the story. And you just keep wondering- what happened to him or her? Where did they go? When did they go? Did I miss it? Every chapter in her life seems to begin and end in all too much of a hurry and before you know it, she's gone from 7 years old, living with her grandmother in Arkansas to 16 in California with her mother and very own baby boy. All that happens in between is this great big blur, and you find yourself wanting to know more about that best friend that she once mentioned or the woman that introduced her to literature and changed her life or the people she stayed with when she was 15 and didn't have a home. You want to know more because, when they were mentioned, they seemed so vital- at the time, they were all that mattered. And then suddenly, they were gone as quickly as they seemed to come.

That's why I sort of hated this book, at first. I expected it to be more poetic, more smooth but everything seemed to come out jumbled and sudden and out of place. Only now- now that I've finished it and put it down and started to move on- only now do I realize that this unpredictable, erratic seemingly mess of a book wasn't poorly written or not well thought out. It was like one long stream of consciousness, but in the best way possible. The way in which this book was written so accurately symbolizes coming of age- it so precisely describes growing up.

The other day, as I was going through my insanely disorganized room- cleaning it out to prepare for repainting the wall from a light peach-y pink and yellow theme to a more dignified, mature, deep red- I came across a number of old notebooks and journals. And as I read about my teachers and friends and problems that seemed to consume my life at the time, I realized that I didn't remember any of it. I didn't remember why I had been mad at Ms.Dina or what the wonderful present that Mackenzie had given to me for my birthday was or who on earth Jane was. I barely even remembered anything about the year that my best friend spent in Puerto Rico- something that I'm absolutely positive consumed every second of every day in third grade. All of this that I'd written about- complained about, cried about- things that crumbled my little heart or things that brought me to life, things that my world spun around- all these things were so quickly forgotten. Just six or seven years later. All that was left were these little snip-its, brought back to life and drawn into my mind again by my writing.

And I realize that- just like Maya- I'm growing up, perhaps slightly too fast. Me not remembering my elementary school years is like Maya jumping through every moment of her own growing up experience in her writing. All of the sudden, these things that meant so much are gone- these shallow things that consumed my life are forgotten. And sometimes I wish, just like with the book, that I could rewind and live through everything slower, get to experience it all again fuller. More poetically, more smoothly. Because now all I have are these little glimpses- like passing by my younger years through the window of a moving train- the view is sharp and inconsistent and everything is rushing by so fast that I only have time do catch tiny glances, snapshots. I want to slow down and get to know the people better and see the places closer and encounter the problems more fully- I need some time to smell the roses. Because I feel that, just like Maya, my life is swerving forward uncontrollably and I'm practically grown up.

And I shouldn't be.

Not yet.